Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at my preliminary task I would say that I have learnt a substantial amount, in many different areas. Whether that be how I approached this task or the actual design/look of my final product. I feel that my final coursework product was enhanced by my ability to play around with the software I used during the production of my magazine, software such as Photoshop, InDesign and dafont.com. Although I felt that my preliminary task was finished to a relatively high standard by the time I had completed my Full product I could see the improvement on my own skill level, for example I was able to add a diagonal strip onto my Front cover which I had neglected to do on my preliminary task as I didn't know how to do so.

I learnt other key lessons such as the importance of time management and how to spend time more effectively on coursework. When i started the AS brief I had an extremely laid back approach and took to long on my research and planning leaving myself a restricted amount of time for my actual product, which was worth the bulk of the marks. Although I was able to finish my product to a high standard I have learnt the importance of approaching my work with a sense of pride and determination, i can achieve this by setting myself goals to complete in a short amount of time.

The front cover demonstrates the most noticeable improvement as i was able to use Photoshop to edit the brightness and general quality of the photo. The image I used on my Final Product proved to be much more challenging to edit as I decided to use a pre-existing background, unlike my preliminary which I used a white background for. I had to use a different set of skills in my coursework as I had to tackle the Contents and double page spread for the first time, my first draft of my contents was similar to my 'Talbot Times' Front cover, being extremely simplistic. I then had to redraft this as I felt it had the possibility to drag my mark down. 

In my preliminary task I had to extract the image from a much larger image, a problem I had to face during the production of my final product. My placement, design and creation of cover-lines improved as I was able to make sure they were all aligned properly as well as making sure that they looked sleek and were appropriate in regard to the genre of the magazine and the target audience. although the task itself was different the preliminary task helped me to understand the small changes I would need to make in order to target my audience correctly for example my genre meant that i could target the younger listener, for example teenagers or the older, more hardcore fans, early to late 20's.